The Key Role of Social Inclusion in Promoting Urban Social Sustainability: An Exploration and Application to Health Equity

Abstract

AbstractBuilding upon a working definition of social sustainability as the processes and institutions that generate health and well-being now and in the future (Dillard, Dujon, and King 2009a), we argue that social inclusion is necessary to ensure that social processes yield collectively higher levels of societal well-being. Social inclusion requires that all persons have effective input into those development processes that affect them, within the current and anticipated constellations of social and economic power. Sen (1999) stated that the purpose of development is to improve human lives by expanding the range of things that a person could be and do. To achieve these they must have access to certain freedoms: the ability to maintain themselves and to have the power or personal agency to bring about change in the world in which they live. Our paper reviews the central role of inclusion in promoting sustainability via an examination of the Community Partnership for Health and Equity, a university-community collaborative seeking to eliminate health disparities for low-income residents of Portland, Oregon, USA using a community-based participatory research approach.